Give Camp Memphis

 

As promised, I've spent the weekend with the good folks of Give Camp Memphis. We've been holed up in the Emerge Memphis building downtown since 5:00 on Friday. The bravest among us (not me) are even sleeping here -- hence the "camp" in Give Camp.

Give Camp is a national initiative that has been popping up in an increasing number of cities. This weekend marks Memphis's second event. The group's slogan is "Coding for Charity," and that pretty much sums it up. Give Camp recruits volunteer tech professionals ("from designers, developers and database administrators to marketers and web strategists") as well as nonprofits in need of technical help, then puts them all in the same place, divides them into project teams, and gives them one solid weekend to complete a tech project.

Most of the projects at this year's Memphis event involve constructing websites, and Chatterbox's is no exception. As I wrote last week, we requested help building an online home for our ongoing Spoon River Anthology project. As of this writing, we're three hours away from the end of the event. The prototype site is shaping up, and though it won't be ready to share for a while (I still have lots of work to do on the content), it will be fully functional and will serve as a fantastic interface for the fantastic poems we're recording.

We pulled an incredible team in Sarah, Matt, George, Jeff, and Jason. Frankly, I'm amazed at all the professionals who turned out to volunteer their time and talent in exchange for nothing more than a thank-you and some (admittedly excellent) food. For my part, all I've really had to do is be around, answering the occasional question, tossing out the occasional idea, and providing the occasional file. Not a bad trade-off at all.

If you're a small nonprofit in a city where Give Camp has a presence, I highly recommend submitting an application. And if you're a technology professional with a penchant for charitable work, I'm sure they'd be thrilled to hear from you.

Chatterbox Travels to Spoon River

A while back, without any real plan in place, I started asking our performers to record short poems from Edgar Lee Masters's classic Spoon River Anthology. Upon hearing the results, I decided that we should tackle the entire collection -- all 220+ poems -- making it a long-term project for the Chatterbox studio. In other words, by the time we make our way through the entirety of Masters's work, more than 220 individuals will have passed through our studio and contributed their time and their talent.

We've got a long way to go with the recordings (we've only completed 50 or so), but I'm happy to say that the technical end of the project has gotten a couple of big boosts lately. GiveCamp Memphis has offered to help us build an interactive website that will lead listeners through a virtual cemetery. (All the poems in Spoon River Anthology are written as epitaphs.) Memphis's famed Elmwood Cemetery will stand in for the Spoon River cemetery. And the very talented John Childress of J&B Childress Photography will capture the images that will make up the website.

With such a great team in place, I'm hopeful that the project will launch soon! Chatterbox's Spoon River site will be a work in progress as we continue to record and post poems. It may take us years to complete. In the meantime, though, we're planning to go ahead and share what we've recorded so far.

To whet your appetite, here are two preview poems: 

Amanda Barker, read by Jennifer Henry

Hare Drummer, read by Bennett Wood

Finally, Karen and I visited Elmwood this afternoon to look around and to take a few preliminary photos. It's an amazing place. Here's a bit of what we saw.

First Look: La Parure / The Necklace

Wow, we've been so busy performing, rehearsing, and recording that I've been remiss in blogging. Let me remedy that with a few images from this week's recording of Guy de Maupassant's timeless story "The Necklace." A first for Chatterbox: We recorded the show in both English and French. Look for both versions to hit the site in the coming months.

 

First Look: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Caligari opens tonight! To whet your appetite, here are some photos from the performance by the multi-talented Nan Hackman.

This Week in Listening: The Intergalactic Nemesis

Over the weekend, my girlfriend and I traveled to Longview, Texas to enjoy a visit with her family and to catch a performance of The Intergalactic Nemesis. The show, which is touring internationally (though not yet intergalactically), has generated an impressive amount of attention in recent weeks, appearing on both Conan and NPR. Some friends saw it a few years ago and recommended it highly. When we heard that it was touring, we decided it was something we couldn't miss.

The Intergalactic Nemesis is a "live-action graphic novel" that combines voice acting, sound effects, music, and artwork. The production began in Austin, Texas as a live radio play, then expanded to include more than 1,200 illustrations penciled by Tim Doyle. As the illustrations cycle by on a large screen, three voice actors, a pianist, and one intrepid sound effects artist work together to create a fully soundscaped multimedia experience.

The story is set in 1933 and follows tough-as-nails reporter Molly Sloan and her sidekick Timmy Mendez as they investigate a mesmerizer named Mysterion the Magnificent. Their meddling brings them into contact with assassins, a heroic librarian, and a race of gooey, many-eyed aliens called Zygons. It's a two-fisted adventure serial welded to a sci-fi yarn, with plenty of action, humor, and weird creatures along the way.

Creator and producer Jason Neulander has wisely kept the show family-friendly; the performance we attended drew a large number of kids (and not all boys, either). The script and the performances are certainly tongue in cheek, but thankfully the show goes beyond self-aware camp. The Nemesis team has crafted an original and enormously entertaining theatrical experience. It's complex and fully realized, and, as all live radio shows should be, it's great fun to watch.

As a regular creator of audio productions, attending the show was especially fun for me. One of the first things that struck me was how familiar their sound effects kit looked. There was the wind machine, the crash box, the door unit, the various noisemakers and kids' toys, and many of the other mainstays of Chatterbox productions. Nemesis makes creative use of these tools, of course, and there were several effects I will happily steal for our own purposes. But in general, it was nice to see this group successfully touring the globe with the same basic materials and approach that we use.

More than that, though, it was a thrill to be part of an audience that was clearly having so much fun with the production. The three voice actors were terrifically versatile, handling the fast pace and numerous characters with great skill. (Often, one actor would play both roles in a two-character scene, and the interactions were never less than clear.) The show's sound effects artist and musician  got just as much of a workout, each helping maintain a quick pace while adding the layers of sound that really brought the story to life. The energy coming off the stage was infectious, and when the lights came up for intermission, the (large) audience already seemed eager for more.

Anything that helps bring live radio back to the mainstream already has my support. But The Intergalactic Nemesis has the added perk of being slam-bang entertainment and a great time at the theater. If the show comes anywhere near your area, don't miss it. Part One is touring now, and I believe Part Two will follow suit after its debut this summer.

First Look: Prison Stories

This week we recorded an adaptation of the amazing Voices of the South project Prison Stories, in which the writings of incarcerated women are translated into a performance piece. Very powerful, moving stuff. You'll be able to hear it in a few months! For now, here are some preview images from Monday's rehearsal.

Happy Chatterween!

Tonight's the night! Be sure to tune in to 91.1 WKNO-FM (through your radio, if you're in the Memphis area, or through the WKNO website) at 7:00 CT to hear Chatterbox's live Halloween broadcast. Or, listen to the online re-broadcast at 9:00 pm CT as part of Transcontinental Terror (which will be streaming original works of audio horror from across the globe from 6:00 - 12:00 pm).

Here are a few images to whet your appetite, courtesy of David Barton, who is also one of our illustrious Sound Effects Artists for the show:

 

Don't miss it!

Halloween Show Load-In

Eric and I spent most of today moving our piles of equipment over to the lovely WKNO studios in Cordova. Here are some pictures of the basic setup -- which, not surprisingly, had evolved even further by the end of tonight's rehearsal.

Report from the Open House

Like most of us, Aiden got into audio theater for the babes.

Earlier this week, we hosted our second Open House in the Chatterbox Studio. It was great fun, with a crowd of about 60 friendly faces. Everyone had a chance to get on mic and to play with sound effects equipment (which was especially fun for the young'uns who attended). And of course there was food and drink and great camaraderie throughout the evening. You can see photos from the Open House on the Chatterbox website.

Events like these remind me how much Chatterbox depends on its community in order to succeed. Our little theater requires directors, actors, writers, musicians, sound effects artists, sound engineers, visual artists, Board members, administrators, donors, and of course listeners. Without every single one of those elements in place, we couldn't do what we do.

If I weren't busy with Chatterbox, I like to imagine I'd spend my free time hunkered down in a basement somewhere, working on a the Great American Novel. Which would be fun, sure -- if nothing else, I could smoke a pipe and wear jackets with elbow patches -- but would also be a fairly solitary endeavor. Meanwhile, in four years of Chatterbox, we've worked with about 220 people in the creation of our shows, and thousands more listen in each month. I'm certainly the richer for it, and I hope all our participants can say the same.

So, no matter how you participate in Chatterbox, thank you! And whether or not you made the Open House, mark your calendar for our next event: a live Halloween broadcast on WKNO-FM, part of the Transcontinental Terror collaboration. More details soon.